story about imaginary people; and such respect as he feels for me, is mainly due to the fact that my writings bring me in a larger income than he could ever make from his mill.  But of course he is a man who is normally healthy, and such men as he are the props of rural life.  He is a good master, he sees that his men do their work, and are well housed.  He is not generous exactly, but he is neighbourly.  The question is whether such as he is the proper type of humanity.  He represents the simple virtues at their high-water mark.  He is entirely contented, and his desires are perfectly proportioned to their surroundings.  He seems indeed to be exactly what the human creature ought to be.  And yet his very virtues, his sense of justice and honesty, his sensible kindliness, are the outcome of civilisation, and bear the stamp, in reality, of the dreams of saints and sages and idealists—­the men who felt that things could be better, and who were made miserable by the imperfections of the world.  I cannot help wondering, in a whimsical moment, what would have been the miller’s thoughts of Christ, if he had been confronted with Him in the flesh.  He would have thought of Him rather contemptuously, I think, as a bewildering, unpractical, emotional man.  The miller would not have felt the appeal of unselfishness and unworldliness, because his ideal of life is tranquil prosperity.  He would have merely wondered why people could not hold their tongues and mind their business:  and yet he is a model citizen, and would be deeply annoyed if he were told he were not a sincere Christian.  He accepts doctrinal statements as he would accept mathematical formulae, and he takes exactly as much of the Christian doctrine as suits him.  Now when I compare myself with the miller, I feel that, as far as human usefulness goes, I am far lower in the scale.  I am, when all is said and done, a drone in the hive, eating the honey I did not make.  I do not take my share in the necessary labour of the world, I do not regulate a little community of labourers with uprightness and kindness, as he does.  But still I suppose that my more sensitive organisation has a meaning in the scale of things.  I cannot have been made and developed as I am, outside of the purpose of God.  And yet my work in the world is not that of the passionate idealist, that kindles men with the hope of bettering and amending the world.  What is it that my work does?  It fills a vacant hour for leisurely people, it gives agreeable distraction, it furnishes some pleasant dreams.  The most that I can say is that I have a wife whom I desire to make happy, and children whom I desire to bring up innocently, purely, vigorously.